Eggcam films penguin colony from above; GoPro robot films lion cubs

The website “Animals” at Trove has a post on a rather complex series of events ensuing after biologists put a mock “egg cam” amidst a penguin colony, hoping for some good penguin shots. They got them, but got some other serendipitious shots as well. As they note:

A falcon-like bird was unwittingly turned into a documentary filmmaker during its trip for lunch. At a rockhopper penguin colony, a striated caracara thought it had caught a break when it located the one remaining egg that hadn’t been hatched — but it turns out, the egg hadn’t hatched for good reason: it was a camera in disguise. After a short assessment, the caracara took off with the camera, capturing incredible, swooping footage of the penguin colony from above.

That isn’t the end of the egg-cam’s journey though. After falling from the caracara’s grasp, a pair of turkey vultures descend on it next, sending it tumbling down a hill toward the colony. It’s been a good few months for birds stealing cameras, and if the popularity of the egg-cam is any indication, there should be more incidents to come.

More on the striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis, a denizen of the Falklands and Tierra del Fuego), can be found here.

While running one of our five 2-week photo safaris to Kenya in 2014, we attached a GoPro camera to a remote control car and drove it up to a lioness with cubs, stopping at a distance where they still showed no interest, and then jiggled the car around just enough to invoke the cubs curiosity. Two of the three cubs then came over and investigated it for 20min, before growing bored and tired and falling asleep back with mum.

I’m sure that Chris Bray is a reputable photographer and had permission to use a toy car to get such footage, but there have been incidents in some S.African Parks of people thinking they can do just about anything to get good film of animals including (I kid you not) sending someone to flush the rhino out of the bushes and sending one’s five year old child over to a group of irascible baboons to get a funny ‘photo bomb’ shot – the last one I witnessed myself. This sort of stuff has become commoner due to Go Pros and their amazing versatility. Anyway, grump over – main point, thanks for these clips!